Basic Drop Biscuits, 5 Ingredients

Learn how to make these easy drop biscuits with only 5 ingredients. This basic recipe makes tender fluffy biscuits. Add herbs, cheese, or sausage to change them up!

Hello friends! I’m back today with a very basic drop biscuit recipe to add to my “Back to Bake-sics” series. If you aren’t familiar with the series, I started it a few months ago with some very basic stripped down recipes that can be used as is, or can be adapted to become as fancy as desired.

I love to create unique and interesting recipes but I could never create an over the top cookie if I didn’t understand what a cookie recipe is at it’s core. So my hope here is to continue to provide some basic recipes that will help get those who are intimidated by baking into it, and to help inspire some creativity to adapt these recipes in various ways.

I use this recipe all the time when I am making dinner on the fly and didn’t plan things ahead or don’t have a lot of time on my hands (which is pretty much always). You can throw these together and have them in the oven in less than 10 minutes. And I love drop biscuits because it eliminates the mess and the waste that comes with rolling and cutting out dough.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love traditional biscuits too. I think they are usually fluffier and have a little better texture, but these have tons of uses too.

I make drop biscuits by themselves as a side for dinner, or drop them over a casserole, or even a cobbler for dessert. You can eat them for breakfast as biscuits and gravy, to sop up your runny eggs, or simply with butter and jam. I can always find a use for them!

And biscuits at their core only need 5 ingredients:

Flour:Use all-purpose flour for these for the main structure of the biscuit. Remember when measuring flour to lightly spoon the flour into the measuring cups and level the cup off with a knife. If you have a kitchen scale, that is the most accurate way to measure flour.

Baking Powder:Baking does most of the leavening in the biscuit. It gives the biscuit the rise and some fluffiness. Since we don’t have any acid in this recipe, you need baking powder instead of baking soda.

Salt:Salt is really what gives some flavor to these biscuits. It also helps with browning a bit.

Butter:Use cold unsalted butter cut into small pieces. You want the butter cold so that when it creates steam when it melts in the oven. This creates flakiness in the biscuits.

Milk:Milk is our moisture. It brings everything together and you want it cold so that it doesn’t start to bring down the temp of the butter.

That’s it! Now if you want a little bit of a sweeter biscuit you can add a few TBSP of sugar. You can also throw in some herbs or cheese or diced up jalapeno.

I like to use up leftover stuff in my fridge that I can’t find another use for. When I made these I threw in some leftover gorgonzola cheese (not that I would have let that go to waste). But there are endless things you can do with biscuits!

Oh my! The tastiest homemade biscuits ever!!!
I added cheddar, thyme, chives, rosemary and a little black pepper. Whole family loved it!
The toughest part was using a fork to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. Could you recommend a good pastry cutter? Thank you!

That’s awesome Sus! Honestly, I just use a very generic pastry cutter that I got at Target. A pastry cutter isn’t one of those kitchen tools that you need to be fancy or expensive. Any kitchen store should have a fairly cheap one that will work well!

Thank you! I've been making the drop biscuit recipe from my Fannie Farmer cookbook, and where they were good, I knew I was doing something wrong because they could have been better. It calls for shortening instead of butter and that is the first change I'll make. I also think I was over stirring. I'll try to remember to come back and let you know how they come out next time.

This is my go-to biscuit recipe. I don’t have a pastry cutter and am clumsy with the forks, so I just use my fingers to mix in the butter and try to be quick about it. Doesn’t seem to affect the delicious taste at all! I’ve eaten these as a side at dinner and as a strawberry shortcake biscuit. Just upped the sugar for dessert. Great, easy recipe.

Make sure you are using unsalted butter, or the salt in the recipe will be too much. If you are using unsalted butter and 1 1/2 teaspoons still feels like too much, then you can definitely cut it back. However, I make these frequently and have never gotten feedback that the salt was too much.